“Tigres” Are Honduras’ New Battalion 3-16

The President of the National Congress’ electoral haste and the US State Department’s hegemonic willfulness are resulting in deplorable decisions being made in Honduras.

We are facing an evil alliance between Juan Orlando Hernandez’s political interests and the Pentagon’s geostrategic plans, coordinated by the US Embassy on Tegucigalpa’s Los Proceres Avenue.

In other words, we are suffering from the United States’ disgraceful exploitation of the institutional malnutrition suffered by the Honduran state since the 2009 coup.

For example, the creation of the Intelligence Troop and Special Security Response Groups (Spanish acronym TIGRES, meaning ‘tiger’) is a monster spawned by this evil alliance, which is already operating in other countries of the world under the auspices of the Southern Command and the Marine Corps.

Before the emergence of this latest invention, promoting urban militarism, the Honduran Congress had approved river concessions, tax enclaves or model cities, the Antiterrorist Law, the Private Communications Interception Law, and the Law for the Extradition of Hondurans to the US.

In reality, it is a package of seemingly legal measures, “a la Honduran”, that permits the US Southern Command, the DEA, the CIA and, in short, the Pentagon, to take complete control of Honduras’ territory and population.

This military-police body that is being created, independent of the Security Ministry, instead reporting to the President, this TIGRE with its own budget, is a repressive jungle animal similar to the Battalion of Death – Battalion 3-16 – financed and trained by the United States in 1981.

This TIGRE is already, in 2012, being trained and equipped with high technology to gather intelligence, both civil and military.

Like the criminals of the 3-16 death squad, the Tigres are concealed in the battalions closest to Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, moving under cover anywhere in country, and under the Ministry of Defense’s command in times of war.

However, the draft legislation refers to an elite police force on the lines of the gendarmerie of Canada and Argentina or the police of Chile and Brazil, and one which respects human rights (hahaha).

The text states that it will provide an immediate response to the prevailing lack of security in Honduras, given that the process of purging the mainstream police force will take several years.

According the current timetable, the ‘Tiger Law’ will be approved next week, in August the first stage of training and selection of its members will be completed and in September the first contingent of 200 officers will be available.

That means that the decision to hire and train them was taken long before the law was to be debated and passed (hahaha), perfectly in line with a Congress full of yes men.

To show that these are coordinated measures, we include here a press report by Steve Watson of Infowars.com, on 24 July 2012, quoting the US agency, Associated Press.

Units of hundreds of military police trained in crime investigation have been created by the Marine Corps to “help the local authorities” gather evidence at crime scenes, according to the Associated Press.

The report states that “The elite battalions will be capable of helping control civil disturbances, handling detainees, forensic work and the use of biometrics to identify suspects”.

Let’s stop right there. Do you see? Really they’re talking about putting urban commandos on the streets, ready to crush the popular insurrections brewing in countries like Honduras, where the pre-election environment is on the point of creating a new institutional political crisis to block the resistance.

The AP report continues, revealing that the TIGRES units, each one made up of 200 to 500 military-police and dozens of dogs, are going to get involved in domestic surveillance “everywhere”.

That’s it. Here we see outlined the neo-Battalion 3-16. To get involved in domestic surveillance is to produce intelligence to the detriment of a country’s citizens.

The draft law is very clear: This special force will cover various areas: air and sea combat, control of the population and territory, organized crime, drug trafficking, illicit associations, criminal investigation, intelligence and information and communication technologies.

We are facing a new political threat disguised as laudable action to combat lack of security, falsely attributed to a presidential candidate, which will give rise to new types of torture, covert political murders and camouflaged forced disappearances.

We cannot accept this type of initiative which will simply strengthen the remilitarizing dynamic within Honduran society, in the context of a national emergency in human rights violations.

We declare ourselves against the TIGRES and we warn that every member of Congress and Porfirio Lobo Sosa will be responsible for the swipes from their claws; if they approve this crude resurrection of the 3-16 of the disappearances and political murders of the Dirty War, they will have once more reverted to their criminal behavior.